Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling
pub: Bloomsbury Children's Books. 768 page hardback. Price: Ł16.99 (UK) ISBN: 0-7475-5100-6

check out website: www.bloomsbury.com/harrypotter

It is Harry Potter's fifth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and life over the past year has gotten all the more confounding and confusing.

After defeating Lord Voldemort for the forth time last year and facing the death of a fellow student, Cedric Diggory, he seems to be on the outside looking in...that's if anyone will actually talk to him! Chance would be a fine thing!

Along with the on-going threat of a now restored Lord Voldemort, Harry has to face some of the most terrifying things he'll ever have to face: girls, untethered hormones and the threat of school examinations in the form of OWLs (Ordinary Wizarding Level). Life never seems to let up for Harry and he'll soon come to realise why.

We've had to wait three years for the release of this, the fifth book in the Harry Potter series...My husband hasn't seen me for three days straight, my eyes are more red and bloodshot than if I had had a heavy session drinking and frankly 768 pages is longer than the New Testament! ‘So what did you think?’ I hear you ask.

The detail of this book is just as good as any of the previous books in the series. It is on a par with the last book, ‘The Goblet of Fire’, in which there was such an overwhelming text we didn't think it could get any longer but it has.

The characters have grown and that is where some people will be cringing as they read this book. The teen-age angst of fifteen year-olds is so prevalent that you feel your own anger rising, at your own teenage years being remembered. The resentment that Harry feels isn't imagined, he genuinely hates the fact that all this happens to him and he can't escape it.

If anything, JK Rowling makes you feel like carting Harry off away from it all, too. Some readers will not want Harry to grow up in this way. Some parents will probably see it as a slur on the Harry Potter World but the fact of the matter remains that children grow into adolescents and force their opinions just as Harry is seen to do in this volume.

Rowling manages to convey hints in an almost back-handed way. The clues are there, as Mr Frost would say in ‘Through the Keyhole’, you just have to look. Hints at the futures of the three main friends are also there but I won't spoil that slither of illumination for anyone who hasn't picked it up yet.

The one thing that has kept the ‘Harry Potter’ series going is its magical way in which it blends the scary and, at times, terrifying Voldemort and Death-Eater scenes with the day-to-day life of Harry and his friends. Throughout the books there is a comforting serene with the feasts in the Great Hall providing a lot of that serenity.

I, as an avid reader, have always missed once finishing the book the scenes in the Great Hall, where food magically appears. You are hearing from the woman who dribbles over her book while she reads about mashed potatoes and lamb chops!

Rowling has been made out by some to be a formulaic author, I think this view is quite wrong to hold. How else would you go through a school year? There's summer holidays, then the start of term, then Christmas, Easter and the end of term. How else would anyone convey Harry's story?

It is actually this rise and fall of life as a child that comforts children young and old and is quite probably why the Harry Potter books are so popular.

This book has the very unavoidable new character of Dolores Umbridge. A member of the Ministry of Magic to be firstly the teacher of Defence Against the Dark Arts and then the High Inquisitor. If you think of modern-day school inspectors and times that by about a hundred you would have Dolores Umbridge.

She is more unlikeable than Rita Skeeter the reporter and that takes some doing. Her constant interruptions of the staff at inappropriate times is hysterical, I honestly believe that this is a reflection of the school system that we hold dear at the present making it all the more funny. If you ever read 'Hem hem' again you will think of Umbridge!

The setting up of the DA in the story is really fantastic. I won't elaborate as to what the DA is, suffice it to say that Harry is very proud of his achievements there and their backdrop in the Room of Requirement is magic in itself. A room that appears to the user only when it is in great need, fantastic piece of imagination.

We get to find out about Professor Snape and all is revealed as to why Snape has such an abhorrent view of Harry's dad, James Potter. For me, it made me feel sorry for Snape and it has made his character all the more real. I think there are quite a few children out there who can relate to Snape's experiences at school in one way or another.

There is, as was promised, also a death of a key character. While I dreaded from finding out that there was one, it really didn't upset me that much when it happened. I think because the way in which it was done, it seemed rushed.

If any of you saw the BBC2 interview with JK Rowling and Jeremy Paxman you would know of this development and that it caused Rowling some distress to write it, I wonder if the scene was clipped a little because of that. There are so many near-misses throughout that this also takes away from the impact of the eventual death.

So, to the important part of the book. Within each of the ‘Harry Potter’ books there is a revelation, that said revelation was the selling paragraph in the jacket of the book where Dumbledore says he is going to tell Harry everything. Unfortunately, we know most of what he tells Harry. It is a little bit of a letdown, more a confirmation of what we believe we know rather than any new revelation.

Overall then, this book is a great story but those who have been hoping for some thickening of the plot, will probably have to wait for the final instalment rather than the intermediary ones. Any series of more than two parts falls within this trap that you can't give away too many carrots before the story is over in the last book. I only hope that when we get there, it'll be worth the wait.

Unfortunately, because of the many hints throughout Rowling's series you really do need to read the previous books. Something that seems quite trivial in the first book takes on a whole new light in later books so I'm afraid if you're new to this, you'll need the box set of the first four books.

All said and done, I still love this book. It has overwhelming imagination and a wealth of wit and humour to boot. I really enjoy the Potter Universe and I should imagine children young and old everywhere will continue to enjoy these books for generations to come.

Hooray for Harry Potter and his creator JK Rowling!

Donna Jones

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